Manado VS Singapore

Manado trip was great, with tonnes of exotic critters.. including mimic octopus! *BIG FAT GRIN*. THEN when I showed my pix to colleague M, she commented that many of these critters can be seen in Singapore. !!! I knew we had an amazing variety of nudibranchs but, Singaporean dragonets and Singaporean bobtail squid? COOLIO! and I thought the only similarity between Lembeh and Singapore was the muck.

Gorgeous dragonet from Koksheng's blog. 

Cyrene 2008

and other dragonets found in Changi, Cyrene and Semakau here.

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Boxcrab (from Lembeh). Was so  excited to see it. 

and we have it on mainland Singapore!

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Longspine scorpionfish (from Lembeh)

for the Singaporean longspine.. click here

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Seamoth!!! (from Lembeh)

seasonally abundant on Chek Jawa!

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Bobtail squid at Pulau Hantu!!!

from Hantu blog 2004

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Pipefish from the Tide Chaser Blog

Semakau 2008

Was looking for the new species found by Blue Tempeh in 2006, 

but sadly, the photo is no longer online. 

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Other of my Manado sightings found locally include Solefish, Frogfish, Crocodile fish /flathead. Of course, there's also the commonly sighted pufferfish, filefish, butterflyfish, octopii, and the list goes on...

Who gets the trash?

Look at where Singapore is on the map and where our arrows are pointing. 

Oh look.. a star all to ourselves. the gahmen will be so proud.

"E-waste is routinely exported by developed countries to developing ones, often in violation of the international law. Inspections of 18 European seaports in 2005 found as much as 47 percent of waste destined for export, including e-waste, was illegal. In the UK alone, at least 23,000 metric tonnes of undeclared or 'grey' market electronic waste was illegally shipped in 2003 to the Far East, India, Africa and China. In the US, it is estimated that 50-80 percent of the waste collected for recycling is being exported in this way. This practice is legal because the US has not ratified the Basel Convention. - Greenpeace International"

Read more about what you can do with your old electronic ware from the new ZerowasteSG website. Come to think of it... that old printer has been sitting in my living room collecting dust for quite a few years...

Corallimorphs and shipwrecks

Invasion of the corallimorphs! Wonder if this is happening in our local reefs.

Work TM, Aeby GS, Maragos JE 2008 "Phase Shift from a Coral to a Corallimorph-Dominated Reef Associated with a Shipwreck on Palmyra Atoll" PLoS ONE 3(8): e2989 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002989

Ok.. this isn't the particular species of corallimorph in the paper but i love this.. so bubbly..

Giant cup mushroom coral (Amplexidiscus fenestrafer)

"Corallimorpharians have several life history traits which allow them to rapidly monopolize patches of shallow substrate in tropical habitats. They are competitively superior to some coral species and possess anatomic structures such as elongated marginal tentacles that allow them to kill competing scleractinian corals... Additionally, corallimorpharians have three different modes of clonal replication (fission, pedal laceration and budding) that allow comparatively rapid monopolization of space on the reef...

The subsequent extent of the area dominated by corallimorphs in this study was much greater than other studies where corallimorphs rapidly invaded damaged areas but to a much more localized extent. This may be due to some substance leaching from the ship such as dissolved iron. Iron makes up the major component of steel and other ferrous metals in mooring buoys and ships, and is known to be a limiting resource for many marine organisms. Iron is an essential trace element for algal growth and nitrogen fixation, and equatorial and south Pacific oceanic waters are extremely low in available iron...

The extensive R. howesii invasion and subsequent loss of coral reef habitat at Palmyra Atoll and the potential association of corallimorph invasions with metal objects should serve as a clarion call to managers dealing with large metal objects such as wrecks on reefs. This will be especially relevant at remote low reef islands and atolls such as Palmyra where dissolved iron concentrations may be extremely limiting. The major sources of iron for the oceans are from wind-blown terrestrially derived dust or in coastal regions, from rivers and terrestrial run-off. Islands closer to continental landmasses or reefs at high islands where iron may be available from chemical erosion of volcanic soils may be less vulnerable to impacts of iron enrichment associated with metal objects. If removal of the shipwreck is not possible, regular systematic monitoring of the benthos for invasive organisms, including cnidarians, should be done to verify the rate of spread to support management actions such as removal of the shipwreck."

Dying Moray Eels

Always felt Morays were quite amazing predators.. both shy and vicious. Seeing one writhing like that is rather scary. I hope I never ever get to see this in South-East Asia. Or anywhere for that matter.

"It doesn't sound like there has been any sort of major, published, peer-reviewed, quantitative documentation of this yet. But that said, something is not right when so many sport divers not only count dozens of dead or dying eels.. "

- Shifting Baselines blog

btw... was surfing on moray eels and discovered that groupers and moray eels actually engage in cooperative hunting! its old news but first time i've heard it! Check out the cool videos on the open-access PLoS Biology site.

"They found groupers often visited giant morays resting in their crevices and rapidly shook their heads an inch or so from the eels to recruit them in a joint hunt. At times this call took place after a grouper failed in its hunt because prey escaped into a crevice the grouper could not get into but a giant moray might. If the moray emerged, the grouper guided the eel to a crevice where prey was hiding. Groupers sometimes even performed a headstand and shook its head over a prey hiding place to attract moray eels to the site. At times the moray ate the fish it rooted out, while at other times the grouper did." - MSNBC

Man vs Wild

Was sharing with some friends about 'Into the Wild' and YK then told me about discovery travel series 'Man vs Wild'.

"In the show, Grylls both demonstrates and narrates techniques for wilderness survival in regions around the globe, from ice fields, mountain ranges, swamps and deserts. The general format of each episode is that Grylls is dropped into the region simulating a stranded explorer/tourist. The episode documents his efforts to survive and find a way back to civilization, usually requiring an overnight shelter of some kind.... The program has shown him eating raw meat and live fish, staving off hypothermia, and drinking the fluids of elephant feces and his own urine for hydration."

Caution: video may be disturbing, especially to the frog pple
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Green Porno

I meant to surf on more 'Emptied Oceans' videos after reading Papa Jeff's recent blog entry. But ended up watching porn instead.. ehem.. Sundance porn no less. Enjoy. (Reminder: this is a *ehem* family friendly blog, for more exciting videos in the Green Porno series, click here.)

"Green Porno is a series of very short films conceived, written, co-directed by and featuring Isabella Rossellini. Inspired by the amazing and often bizarre sexual practices of insects and other creatures, these 8 films are both comical and insightful studies of the curious ways a variety of earth's tiny critters 'make love'. Simple, playful and childlike by design, Green Porno provides a unique and provocative glimpse into an 'underground' world of sexual encounters." - Sundance, Green Porno

"It will never affect us."

Don't you think Singaporeans tend to have this apathetic attitude? Pretty sure majority of Singaporeans believe what the local newspapers say, including the recent report that Singapore is safe from rising sea levels. Well.. check this out then:

This is what a group of NUS students found. Singapore will look like this if the Greenland icesheets melt (and sea-level around Singapore rises by 7m). *editted* This sounds like an extreme case scenario, but look at this piece of news: I quote- 

The melting increased by about 30 percent for the western part of Greenland from 1979 to 2006, with record melt years in 1987, 1991, 1998, 2002, 2005 and 2007...Inclusion of the dynamic processes of these glaciers in models will likely demonstrate that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment underestimated sea-level projections for the end of the 21st century"

Saw this image on a presentation by Prof Wong Poh Poh during a recent talk on climate change and sea-level rise and its implications on coastal management in the Asia Pacific region at the University of Adelaide, Singapore (thanks to BWV mailing list). The vision's pretty haunting don't you think. First thing you think of is.. hmm.. where's my house? ok. never buy a house in the east, next thing i'm thinking.. let's all live on Bukit Timah.. i'm sure it can handle 5million pple. right.

A thought-provoking point by Prof Wong that stayed with me was that maybe we shouldn't take sea-level rise as such a negative thing. Humans are used to living on land. But with more water surrounding us, maybe we should think of ways to live on the sea instead. M felt it pretty ridiculous but I think it's actually a good idea. What say u?

Read more about the issue on WildSingapore.